Mark Slavkin, the energetic school board candidate who, with the strong backing of the teachers' union, defeated incumbent Alan Gershman in Tuesday's runoff, wasted little time savoring his victory before taking aim at another potential opponent--Los Angeles Supt. Leonard Britton. Slavkin, who had supported the teachers in the bitter nine-day strike and made a campaign slogan out of a pledge to "shake up the fat-cat administrators and bureaucrats," put the superintendent on notice Tuesday night, saying he was unhappy with his handling of the contract negotiations.

Seeking to cast doubt on his opponent's claims of political independence, Westside Los Angeles school board candidate Mark Slavkin on Monday challenged incumbent Alan Gershman to reveal the names of hundreds of small campaign contributors. Gershman refused, saying the demand was "another example of Slavkin's smear tactics" and that disclosure of smaller donors' names could expose them to harassment from the district teachers' union, which has targeted Gershman for defeat.

What may well be a mere handful of voters will decide several important runoff elections on Tuesday in Los Angeles. In the primary, 57 votes separated two candidates in a school board race, so, as usual, every vote counts. There are contests for the Northeast San Fernando Valley City Council seat, the West Valley and Westside spots on the Los Angeles Board of Education and two district-wide seats on the Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees. CITY COUNCIL--Los Angeles City Councilman Ernani Bernardi, 77, is in his own words a man who is tight with a tax dollar.

A divided Los Angeles Board of Education narrowly approved hefty salary raises for administrators late Monday, despite complaints from teachers and some state legislators that district managers already are overpaid. The board voted 4 to 3 to give top management a 16% raise over two years. The vote was 7 to 0 in favor of giving middle management, such as principals, a 24% increase over three years--the same raise teachers won after a nine-day strike in May. At the same time, the board formally ratified a new teachers' contract, which provides a 24% three-year salary raise and a larger role for teachers in making decisions on how schools should be run. As of late Monday the board had approved cuts totaling $43 million, although it had not yet voted on a tentative $3.8-billion budget for 1989-90.

The Los Angeles teachers strike created plenty of publicity for the two incumbents seeking reelection Tuesday to the Board of Education. Now voters will decide whether the nine-day walkout worked in favor or against Westside board member Alan Gershman and West San Fernando Valley member Julie Korenstein. Both are seeking reelection to the school board and both stood on opposite sides in the contract dispute. United Teachers-Los Angeles, the union that represents most of the district's teachers, is seeking to reelect Korenstein and defeat Gershman, thereby securing a sympathetic majority on the seven-member board that decides educational and fiscal policies for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Overnight, the balance of power in the nation's second-largest school district may have shifted dramatically. As a result of Tuesday's runoff election, the Los Angeles teachers union, which two weeks ago was locked in a bitter strike against the Los Angeles Unified School District, has won what appears to be a sympathetic majority on the Board of Education. And teachers suddenly face the heady prospect of wielding new influence over how the sprawling district--with about 600 schools and nearly 600,000 students--is run. The change on the seven-member board also raises questions about the future of district Supt.

Teachers in the Los Angeles school district have targeted Westside incumbent Alan Gershman for defeat in the April 11 school board election, pledging financial support and campaign workers for challenger Mark Slavkin. Union backing can be crucial in low-turnout school board elections, and a victory by Slavkin, a Democratic activist and deputy to County Supervisor Ed Edelman, could tip the balance of power on the sharply divided, seven-member school board the teachers' way.

Going into the final 10 days of a potentially pivotal campaign, incumbent Los Angeles school board member Alan Gershman is ahead in political fund raising, despite the backing his challenger is receiving from the district's large teachers' union. Gershman, a two-term Westside representative targeted for defeat by the union, has raised nearly $91,000 since the first of the year, new campaign finance reports showed Friday.

High in the chaparral-covered hills above Malibu, a world away from the urban gang warfare, poverty and overcrowding that ravages so many Los Angeles public schools, Topanga Canyon Elementary School has its own variety of troubles. Children can't get across the road. New development is pouring more fast-moving traffic down the two-lane mountain highway and children must dodge cars to get to school.

At Jefferson High School in South-Central Los Angeles, Cathy Nadler and a small group of fellow teachers run a special program in which they devise the courses, write the curriculum, choose their own textbooks and directly control some money for books and supplies--all without having an administrator peering over their shoulders every step of the way. "Teachers make all the decisions," Nadler, a 16-year veteran of the classroom, said with pride,...